7 Predictions For The Shape Of Content Marketing In 2020

Jayson DeMers
, ContributorI demystify SEO and online marketing for business owners.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

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Wait a minute, isn’t it only 2017?

You’re right, and 2017 is shaping up to be a big year for content marketing, but as fast as technology develops, it still takes a few years for trends to really take form. Google Glass seemed like a big deal at the time—until it wasn’t, and smart watches never grew to become the market dominators they were once forecasted to be.

At the same time, I remember seeing the flurry of posts calling for the death of SEO at the arrival of the Panda and Penguin updates, which played a major role in shaping SEO (but never came close to killing it).

So rather than taking a stab at the immediate repercussions and developments that may tweak your content marketing strategy this year, I want to look further into the future, where these trends and technologies will have had more time to manifest, so you can prepare for the bigger disruptions to come:

1. Augmented reality interactions.

Augmented reality had a big year in 2016, with Oculus Rift, Pokemon Go, and the announcement of Snapchat Spectacles (among other tech developments). But it’s still not popular or widespread enough for it to be categorized as a viable medium for content marketing. But now, all doubts about the technology’s future have been squashed, and brands will be racing to be among the first to leverage this new medium for their own purposes, whether that’s interactive advertising or new experiences for in-person customers.

2. A reshaping of SEO.

Unless you’ve been centering your business on an Amazon store or a similar eCommerce platform, most of your SEO efforts revolve around your website. This seems both intuitive and obvious; search engine results pages (SERPs) are basically giant lists of web pages, so the more visibility you get there, the better. However, we’re starting to see different kinds of entries in SERPs, and less exposure for websites in general. Knowledge Graph entries and rich answers are replacing traditional site entries, apps (including streaming app content) are rising in relevance, and of course, our digital assistants are parroting answers to us, eliminating the need to review an SERP. As these trends develop, users will still rely on search, but they’ll use it in entirely new ways—and the importance of website-specific optimization will begin to decline in favor of things like app SEO and optimization for rich answers.

3. Live video dominance.

Live video’s popularity isn’t exactly a secret, but there’s one thing holding it back from being a dominant form of content on the web: participation. Live videos, when available, attract a lot of user attention, but not enough brands have jumped on the trend. Part of this is due to the amount of planning necessary for a “successful” feed, and mobile data plans and Wi-Fi reliability may also enter into the equation. But by 2020, my guess is live video will stabilize as an available means of communication, and we’ll see it in higher demand and in more places—including search results.

4. A native advertising surge.

People hate advertisements. They’re tired of being bombarded with ad messages, they don’t like the idea of being persuaded, and they resent the big businesses that are trying to take their money. That’s why native advertising, which I view as a hybrid of traditional advertising and content marketing, is likely to constitute the majority of ad revenue online by 2020. Even traditional forms of advertising will work harder to “blend in” with the type of content that users expect to see in a given medium.